In Darkness Bound
by Jedi Buttercup
Summary: When all other courses have been weighed, apparent folly may prove the only path worth taking.
1. In Darkness Bound

**Title**: In Darkness Bound

**Author**: Jedi Buttercup

**Disclaimer**: The words are mine; the worlds are not. I claim nothing but the plot.

**Rating**: T

**Summary**: A:tS, LotR. _No one yet lived with a better claim to It than Illyria_. 400 words.

**Spoilers**: A:tS mid-"Not Fade Away" (5.22); AU for LOTR

**Notes**: Follows "Look On My Works, Ye Mighty" and "The Courage of Men". Challenge fic.

* * *

In the aftermath of the battle against the Wolf, Ram and Hart, Illyria left the alley strewn with corpses behind her and went in search of the object known in her youth as Sauron's Bane. She had seen its image in her guide's books and felt its whisper underneath the song of the green; the One Ring still existed, and no one yet lived with a better claim to it than she.

She did not stop to bury the one called Charles, nor to collect the ashes of the half-breeds that had thought themselves her betters. Their deaths signified nothing, laid no additional burden upon her; her decision had already been fixed the moment her guide had expelled his last breath in the dwelling of the creature Vail. She had fought on only to expend her anger, to make trophies of the spines of his enemies and clear the way of those who might dare oppose the actions she planned to take.

The song of the Ring was not as loud in her ears as it had been in the beginning, when she had been new to this world and to her position as god-king of its mercenary armies, but it was still sufficiently audible for her purpose. The Dark One had expended much energy, channeled through that band of gold and power, to bring her forces here; it had resonated with her signature thereafter no matter how far she traveled. Even in this latter day, it still broadcast its presence like a beacon.

She tracked it to Rome, where she ripped it from the broken corpse of a gnat who had dared style himself Immortal based on the gifts lent him by its corrupting power. His blonde-maned consort attempted valiantly to defend him, then shied back in horror when his true form was revealed in death. What one such as he had been planning to do with a Slayer, Illyria could not imagine- but nor did she care. She left the woman wailing pathetically over the corpse without a second thought and returned with her trophy to the resting place of her guide.

He remained in the hall of Vail as she had left him: face up on the floor, frozen in the instant of his death. He would wake soon, to a new and better truth; this future would become the lie. Illyria would make certain that happened.


	2. Another Path to Tread

**Title**: Another Path to Tread 

**Author**: Jedi Buttercup

**Disclaimer**: The words are mine; the worlds are not. I claim nothing but the plot.

**Rating**: T

**Summary**: A:tS, LotR. When all other courses have been weighed, apparent folly may prove the only path worth taking. 600 words.

**Spoilers**: A:tS mid-"Not Fade Away" (5.22); AU for LOTR

**Notes**: Follows "The Courage of Men" and "In Darkness Bound". Explains a bit more of the backstory behind this 'verse.

* * *

Over the many millennia following the final triumph of Sauron over the peoples of Arda Marred, the power of the Valar in the native lands of Ilúvatar's children slowly dwindled. As time passed and those who remembered their names all perished or passed into the Uttermost West, their influence fell further and further into myth, until they were able to directly meddle only in the lives of a handful of Men whose part-Elven ancestors they had kept sheltered during the Great Fall.

The bloodline of Aragorn Elessar, who had reclaimed the scepter of Arnor barely long enough to fight a rearguard action while its peoples fled the coming slaughter, and his wife, Arwen Evenstar, who had defied her father's wishes to follow her heart, was the focus of their limited interference. The sons of their son were preserved through the long eons in an unbroken chain; for good or ill, they each were marked for destinies greater than those of other Men. In them was embodied one last spark of hope that all, perhaps, was not lost, the faintest echo of long-forgotten Númenor.

Despite changes in name and rank, despite the family's ignorance of their history and responsibilities, they were of Luthien's line, which it was said of old would never fail, and in that truism all the Valar's plans for the future were based. The last of the heirs born within the twentieth century of the Western calendar of the fifth age of Man, was especially exemplary of that unusual heritage; he embodied more potential and danger both than any other of his ancestors in many years. From their vantage point in their mystically hidden realm, they watched his tempering with impatience and a trace of fear: the Seers among the Elves had suspected since his earliest childhood that in the forging or breaking of him the final fate of the second-born of Arda might well be decided.

The rebirth of the ruler of the other-dimensional army Sauron had summoned to sweep his enemies from Middle-earth in the shell of young Wesley's beloved was one of the final signposts warning that that End was near. The resurfacing of the One Ring, in the possession of an insignificant evil on the opposite side of the world, was another. Surreptitiously, so as to avoid notice of the Beings in Power over the mortal world, the Valar responded to these threats by lending the damaged Man what help they could: needful knowledge always unasked-for at his fingertips, and an increase in his magical ability. But even that was not enough. When he struggled against the dark Warlock, Vail, his might was not sufficient to prevail: Wesley perished painfully with neither heir nor victory on the horizon, and for one interminable moment all seemed lost.

Until Illyria acted. The Warlock was killed, the Ring retrieved, the god-king's worshippers called upon as a pool of power-- and life was breathed back into the body of their Champion. She had snatched a possibility of victory from the jaws of defeat, a development no-one had been expecting.

The Valar watched Illyria slide the Ring on her finger and did nothing to stop her; instead, they waited eagerly as she rolled up Time like a curl of ribbon on a spool. For they knew that when all other courses have been weighed, apparent folly may prove the only path worth taking: and so the chessboard reset itself, intact and whole, with two extra pieces on the board.

Time ran forward again. And Wesley Wyndham-Pryce took the first breath of his second life in the forests of Eriador.

--


	3. In An Antique Land

**Title**: In An Antique Land

**Author**: Jedi Buttercup

**Rating**: T

**Disclaimer**: The words are mine; the worlds are not.

**Summary**: A:tS/LotR. _It was many minutes before Wesley remembered that there was something unusual about the very fact of his waking._ 1000 words.

**Spoilers**: Post-"Not Fade Away"; slightly pre-trilogy for "The Lord of the Rings"

**Notes**: For the Twistedshorts August Challenge. A continuation of the "Edge of a Knife" 'verse.

* * *

Awareness returned to Wesley slowly, by gradual degrees. It was many minutes before he remembered that there was something unusual about the very fact of his waking; many more before he stirred himself to recall what that unusual something might be, and blink his eyes open in confused wonder.

Light shone down upon him, warm and brilliant and unexpected: sunshine, clearer and more intense somehow than he recalled being used to. The dark interior of the hall of Vail was nowhere within his range of vision, nor any part of the city he'd left behind; nor, in fact, _any_ landmark that he recognised. Grasses and small, delicate flowers spread beneath and around him, ragged and lush and wild: a small clearing in the midst of a stand of dark-leaved, ancient deciduous trees.

He drew a deep breath; his lungs felt strangely empty, as though the wind had been knocked out of him, and they burned as they filled with fresh, crisp air. He smelled only water and green growing things around him, beyond the familiar background odours of his own body; the air was clean and free of pollutants in a way he'd never experienced even in England, never mind California.

But the sun was the same as the one he'd left behind, though subtly brighter without the veil of pollutants he'd grown accustomed to; the half-suspicion that he'd somehow fallen back through to Pylea fell apart as he analysed angle and colour. He furrowed his brow, then drew a second breath, stirring himself to sit up and take stock, and as he lifted a hand to touch the bloodied hole in his shirt he noticed another curious thing: there was no pain anywhere in his body.

No tension headache. No low, grinding exhaustion, born of one too many nights spent with bottle and book and grief in place of rest and nourishment. No wound in his abdomen beneath the rent fabric: he remembered the moment of his failure now, remembered mocking words, agonising pain, and the taste of blood in his mouth.

He pushed the memory aside, examining himself further. He had no wrinkles either, he discovered, as he lifted a hand still covered in flakes of drying blood and turned it over to scrutinise. No calluses, save the oldest of them, the ones he'd earned on the hilt of a sword in his teens. No scar at his throat. None of the marks, in fact, that had been written on his body by the duties and disasters of his lives as Watcher, demon hunter, and supernatural private investigator. Or friend: the reminder of the gunshot that had kept him wheelchair bound for many weeks had vanished with the rest of them. It was as though he'd been remade, or had regressed backward in time. He considered that a moment, uncomprehending; then felt a sudden, dim flutter of a long-forgotten emotion.

Hope. Had he somehow earned his way to Heaven, after all? He looked up at that thought, a trembling in his spirit about what the rest of the landscape might reveal- and gasped, staring into the looming face of she who had long haunted him. "Fred," he whispered, heart thudding in his chest.

She met his gaze with hers- and he froze, feeling as though the air had been knocked out of him once more. No; this was no Heaven, unless it was one crafted by an ancient demon god. The pitiless presence of Fred's murderess stared coolly at him out of her too-blue eyes; she otherwise wore Fred's form, and an unusual coat of what looked like hand tooled leather over rugged, unfamiliar clothing.

She raised an eyebrow at him, then dropped a stack of similar gear beside him. "Change," she said. "I brought us to this time and place to undo the Wolf, Ram and Hart prior to their creation; but I no longer have as much control as I once did over the flow of eternity. It may be many years, or mere months before Sauron achieves command of the Bane. We must move quickly."

Wesley gaped at her. Brought? Did she-? He hurriedly gathered his feet under him and stood to get a better look at his surroundings. He found their small clearing, pleasant as it was, surrounded by more ominous country; hills rose steadily around them, steep heights and ridges crowned here and there by half-glimpsed, jagged towers and crumbling walls of stone. Nothing was recognisable. But then- it wouldn't be, would it? He looked down at the gap in his shirt again. "Where did you get the strength for this?" he asked, voice harsh and rasping in his throat. She shouldn't have been able to, not after they'd bound her to stabilise her form.

"They prayed to me, even after so many millennia," Illyria replied, mouth curved in proud triumph. "Such were the power and glory I commanded. With the catalyst of their worship, I was able to access their lifeforces in this form; and once you had perished, I no longer felt the need for restraint."

"You _killed_ them," he whispered, dull horror mixing with the familiar weight of despair on his spirit.

"I restored you," she countered, jaw setting angrily, "and set in motion events that will assure I am never known to be worshipped in your world. Is that not enough, even for one so pathetic as you?"

Never known- yes, she _had_ done it. She'd sent them backward in time, erased everything he'd ever known.

He closed his eyes again, feeling the weight of earth under his feet, the kiss of sunlight on his face, the thudding of his heart in his chest. He was alive. Alive without Fred. Separated from friends, kin, personal effects, home- everything save Her. No hope for him now, any more than ever there had been.

But he still had a cause. One worth serving: without Illyria, Fred's soul would never burn.

He stooped and picked up the clothes. It would do.

-x-


End file.
